Nine
by Blaze6
Summary: AU baseball Brittana. Top prospect Brittany Pierce begins her first season with the San Francisco Specters hoping to play up to expectations. Veteran second baseman Santana Lopez, recovering from an off-season car accident, is hoping to play at all.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Nine

Summary: AU baseball Brittana. Top prospect Brittany Pierce begins her first season with the San Francisco Specters hoping to play up to expectations. Veteran second baseman Santana Lopez, recovering from an off-season car accident, is hoping to play at all.

Disclaimer: I don't own Glee or any of the other copywritten/trademarked items that will be appearing in this story.

A/N: Two things about this fic. First, it's a slow burn. And by slow, I mean slooow. You won't even meet Santana for a chapter or two. Second, this is a world in which women's professional sports exist on the same level as men's (they even have their own network); as such, the structure and rules of major league baseball are essentially the same for the fictitious Women's Baseball League. I watch a lot of baseball (go Giants!) but I don't play, so please forgive any technical errors as the story progresses. Thanks for reading!

* * *

_Prologue: I don't have a choice, but I still choose you_

* * *

There are a lot of things Brittany loves about baseball, but center field is not one of them.

Hitting is awesome, running the bases is great, being outside is a blast, putting on the uniform and the hat and pulling her ponytail through the hole in the back is fun, and the most fun of all is catching a ball in the pocket of her glove and closing her fingers around it and throwing it hard to the next player or her coach or her dad.

Center field only has some of these things, like being outside and wearing hats, but not enough catching the ball and throwing it in. Also, too much standing around waiting for something to happen.

Standing is boring, so Brittany practices the new spinning move she learned in ballet on Wednesday. It has a French name that sounds like a fancy cookie—like, maybe in France it means spin but also means elephant ear, which is her favorite fancy cookie because it's flaky and cinnamon-spicy and has an animal name.

Up on her toe, arms out, spin spin spin spin, four times so she ends up where she started. The hardest part is getting to her tippy-toe, since the pointy parts on her shoes want to stay stuck to the grass and dirt and not in the air, for reasons that don't make any sense yet because all she's doing is standing out here.

Coach said the pointy bits—cleats, gotta remember that; all the grown-ups are crazy about real words even though they aren't nearly as fun—are good for not slipping when she runs, because the grass is wet and slippy out here. But the girl on the big dirt bump all the way in the middle has to wear them too, and the dirt there isn't wet _or_ slippy, but hard and so packed down she could barely kick at it like they do on TV.

Mound. The big dirt bump is a mound. Which is also the name of that candy bar that's the same thing as an Almond Joy without the almonds. Almonds sounds like mound, too, especially after she says it a bunch of times. Almond almond almond, mound mound mound. From here, it sort of looks like an almond, although almonds don't usually have people standing on them.

Standing is _so_ boring.

Coach said she would start out here, since she's tall for her age and can run fast, which is awesome at recess when they play tag because she can outrun everyone and also tag them on the head, even the boys, but in baseball, tall and fast is a secret code for lonely and bored.

There's so, so much space between her and the girl on her left and the boy on her right, and so much space between her and the mound and the one-two-three-four-five-six kids around it. Coach must like them better, or they're all friends, since they all got to stay together and close to Coach.

Or maybe they're all a bunch of babies, since they also have to stay close to their moms and dads, who don't get to sit all the way out here.

(Maybe they're not babies. She wants to play closer to her dad, because he probably can't even see her all the way out here, and her spins are so awesome he should be able to see them up close.)

Up on her toe, arms out—but not too much; the glove on her left hand is heavy and throws off her perfect arm posture—and spin, spin, spin, spin. Nailed it.

She drops back to the ground, lets her cleats bite at the grass and the dirt. Standing is also super-boring because the kid with the bat can't hit the ball and everyone has to get a hit before they can switch sides and she can stop standing and hit. If he doesn't hit the next one they're going to have to get the tee out, and the tee is for babies, like her sister who just came home last month and cries all the time and even though she can't even stand yet or do much other than cry and eat and sleep, could probably hit a baseball without a tee.

(If she can't yet, which she can because Pierces are full of baseball skills, just ask her dad, Brittany will show her how.)

The only good thing about being all the way out here is that grass smells way better than her new baby sister, and it is also a lot quieter than her new baby sister, but just about as warm standing here in the sun as when her mom handed her the baby and said "be careful" and "put your hand under her head" and she got to feel just how warm a baby is.

Holding her was almost like snuggling with Lord Tubbington, only Ashley isn't furry and doesn't purr. She thinks it would be really great if babies purred, and also if they used a litter box.

Here comes the tee. Time for another elephant-ear-spin. The tee should be illegal. Spin spin spin spin. They're seven. Big kids. Spin spin spin spin. Not as big as Little League kids, but soon enough this doofus-dork-face-teeball-baby is going to have to figure it out.

The bat pings as she starts her spins again, so she stops, but it wasn't four spins, it was only two and a half, so now she's facing the wall. But it doesn't really matter, since when she turns around, the ball isn't anywhere near her. Lame dorkface only hit it foul.

What is near her is a really big daisy, like super-big, with a hundred million white petals that would look really good tucked in her ear against the one-size-fits-all red cap. She is so glad she noticed it before boring standing turned into running and she crushed it with her pointy shoes.

The daisy is not attached to the ground as tightly as her cleats are and it pops right off, just enough stem to fit behind her ear. She tucks it in, smoothing away a loose strand of hair, and turns to go back to her position.

And something lands on her head, connecting with the button at the crown of her cap softly before bouncing away. Ouch. She rubs at the spot and twists to see what hit her. A bird, probably, and maybe if it's close enough she can catch it for Lord Tubbington. He loves birds, sits in the window all day and watches them, and makes this cool chattering meow that's so close to bird calls that he must be trying to trick them into coming closer so he can eat them. But then Coach is standing in the way, and also her dad, which is cool, because she didn't know he could teleport, but also not cool, because he's in her face, all scrunchy-eyed and concerned.

"Are you okay?"

She nods. "Did a bird land on me?"

"No, sweetie, it was the ball."

Coach is kind of stupid, not that she will say that because stupid is a mean word, but really, if she got hit on the head with a ball, wouldn't it hurt more? "No, I think it was a bird."

"Brittany, did you see the ball?"

Another silly question. Her glove is like a ball magnet (part of her Pierce magic baseball skills) and she can't think of the last time she missed a ball, so obviously, if she'd seen it, she would've caught it. She tosses her head no, but carefully, so the daisy doesn't fall out.

Coach exchanges a look with her dad, who shrugs, and she doesn't know what it means but adults are always having silent eye-talks around her, so there's a fifty-fifty chance she's in trouble Also a fifty-fifty chance this is a good thing. That's the best thing about fifty-fifty chances; like a switch hitter (like she is already), they can go either way.

"Britt, are you having trouble concentrating out here?" Her dad asks the question, since he knows that sometimes, or always, she loses focus when things slow down or stop being interesting.

She isn't, she explains, it's just that standing is boring, and spinning is fun and also French, and daisies are really pretty, and that maybe she would've noticed the ball better if center field wasn't so dull and far away from all the fun.

Her dad and Coach start another eye-talk session, so she sits down and waits, pulling grass out stalk by stalk, and poking them on her cleats, so that each spike will have a pom-pom of grass like a Koosh ball, or maybe a hula skirt.

"Listen, I'm not telling you how to manage your team, I'm just saying she'll do better with a little more action."

"Where am I supposed to play her? The infield spots are filled."

Making hula skirts is pretty easy. Yank, poke, that's all there is to it. The spikes are pretty small, so she only needs a few blades of grass for each one.

"That kid playing shortstop is way better on pop-ups than ground balls. Stick him out here. He's pretty quick and he always just sticks the glove up every time a ball comes at him." Her dad makes a funny impression of Logan, who _does_ just stick his hand up in the air every time the ball is near him and misses everything on the ground. She giggles to herself and tugs at the grass.

"You know Brittany is fast enough, and she's got the arm for it. Give her a shot. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. What can it hurt?"

"Okay," Coach says. "Let me see if we have a smaller glove for her."

He trots off and her dad kneels down. Wordlessly, she shows him her hula skirts, and he smiles. "You want to try a different spot?"

She nods, and the petals of the daisy rustle against her ear. He helps her up and they walk in, stopping halfway between third base and second base. "Brittany S. Pierce, meet your new position," he says, gesturing grandly around them. "Shortstop, Brittany, Brittany, shortstop."

She likes it already.

* * *

Later, much later, Brittany finds it pretty funny that the rest of her life took form the day a fly ball popped her on the head.

Before that revelation, there are three other managers, too many coaches to mention, baseball camps, state championships, national rankings, All-American teams, college championships, scouts in the stands, more rankings.

(Lots of choosing, too—choosing baseball over ballet, choosing OSU over Florida State, choosing bats and gloves and shoes and sponsors. Choices suck. She disappoints more people than she pleases, and she hates that.)

With the rankings comes talk, so much talk, about her raw talent, and her speed, and her ability to swing the bat, and the way she moves on the field, how she covers every inch of her position and some of the outfield and the two bases framing her. Talk about her glove work and her arm. Talk about her team skills, too, not just about her innate baseball skills but _how_ she plays—unselfish, willing to sacrifice, a good team player (and at this level of the game, this _team_ game, that is a quality both essential and rare), a player who has all of the necessary intensity but still has fun.

(They all seem surprised that she has fun still, but if she wasn't supposed to enjoy herself anymore, why didn't anyone tell her?)

National media are excited about her; she stops watching WSPN after she hears her name mentioned for the four hundredth time that week (plus, for a network devoted to the lady-athlete, they spend way too much time comparing her to dudes). Brittany knows she is good, great even, but the analysts call her 'phenom' and 'future-Hall-of-Famer' and all kinds of lofty things that don't really sound like her, the girl who just loves to play well, who enjoys turning double plays and stealing bases, and likes to win. The rumor mills have her linked to just about every team in the league in the upcoming draft—even teams that are so far back in the first round they don't have a shot.

Draft rumors are kind of annoying; her name has been discussed every year since she made the All-American team as a sophomore—like anyone was really going to draft a fifteen-year-old who can barely understand algebra and doesn't have a learner's permit yet, even if she does play shortstop like no one's ever seen. She gets picked every year through the remainder of her high school and college careers, and every year she turns down the tiny development contract offered. These drafts are rhetorical. Or, well, not rhetorical exactly, but she never remembers what word she really wants.

(Besides, she thinks, how many players get labeled 'highly touted' and never meet the expectation?)

When the real draft rolls around, the one that counts, she gets invited to the televised event in New York but hosts a draft party at her parent's house instead. Her party ends up televised anyway, since the draft is a foregone conclusion—she's going first and she's going to the San Francisco Specters—and the networks want to see her reaction to a pick she can actually accept.

She isn't quite sure how to react. There are stock answers of course, the same answers given in professional sports since the dawn of professional sports, but none of them really apply. She's been working for this her whole life; of course she's happy that she's going to play pro ball but the fact that it's happening is more obvious than San Francisco picking her.

The Specters traded up for her, gave up a couple of good minor-league prospects to get the draft pick. Their decision to drop development on those prospects to give her major-league playing time straight out of college is well-documented on those primetime offseason talk shows she stopped watching. Her dad tells her everything the analysts say; all of the talk that makes her crazy makes him proud.

Brittany's never been to San Francisco, but she follows all of the Women's Baseball League action, and the Specters are good. Well. _Were_ good. Last season they got slammed with injuries and ended up third in their division and smack in the middle of the league—not terrible but not great either. The Specters are one of the original teams in the league, have a gorgeous ballpark on the bay a couple of miles south of the Giants' home field, and up until last season's dance with mediocrity, had been in the postseason more often than not. San Francisco is a great baseball town; the Specters don't sell out their stadium the way the Giants do, but from what Brittany has seen on TV, it's a full house most nights. She's looking forward to playing there. That kind of energy suits her.

(San Francisco suits her in other ways. People in Ohio always talk about the city like it's three-quarters crazy and one-quarter genius, which happens to her, too. And just like her it stores all its restless energy just under the surface.)

Just for fun, when she's practicing her surprised-but-pleased face in the mirror, she throws in a couple of oh-crap-not-San-Francisco faces to prank the cameras. It's part of her reputation they don't talk about on national television—being an awesome teammate means keeping the girls loose, and her non-sequiturs and her dry humor and the legendary shaving cream incident do not leave the locker room.

When Will Schuester, the Specters' general manager, calls her name, though, she's too surprised by her parent's stereo all of a sudden blaring that old hippy song about San Francisco and flowers in your hair to pull the prank, and instead, her actually-surprised-but-pleased face gets broadcast over screens across the country along with her mom's hand putting a big white flower in her hair.

All at once, there is both a microphone in her face and Specters jersey in her hand, and the guy with the camera is asking her how she feels, and that song keeps playing. This moment is not at all how she pictured it two weeks ago and it's exactly how she pictured it on a wooden bunk at that All-American summer baseball league in Iowa when she was fifteen. As it turns out, even foregone conclusions are a little bit chaotic and a lot bit euphoric.

Brittany puts the jersey on, adjusts the flower around the orange-billed gray Specters cap handed to her by one of her college teammates, gives the usual answers about her dreams coming true and hoping she can make a difference on her new team.

He asks her about the presumption that she is making the roster come spring training in February, and isn't she worried about making the transition from college to the majors so quickly?

Brittany shrugs.

February can't come fast enough.


	2. Chapter 2

_Chapter One: I am ready, I am ready (I am fine)_

* * *

Snow swirls around the truck, big, fluffy white flakes churning, dancing, landing gently on the steaming hood and dusting the tailgate, flashing orange in time with the hazard lights, drifting to a stop upon the open door and bright rainbow mitten holding it open, melting on the straw-colored hair leaking from a gray-and-orange beanie.

"Honey, you're sure your flight wasn't cancelled?"

Brittany pulls her head back in the cab, closing the door behind her, and the snow dusting her head begins to melt in earnest. Her dad has the truck nice and cozy, the heat set to 't-shirt weather.' "When I called before we left, they said flights were leaving," she shrugs. "I guess it's supposed to stop soon."

She scratches her scalp clumsily, with all four mittened fingers, through the hat. All of these winter layers are stifling, and she's sweating. Honest to god sweating, while it's snowing and like fifteen degrees outside. "I think Mom forgot I'm going to Arizona," she says. "I don't know what I'm going to do with this stuff out there. Or in San Francisco. I mean, they say it gets cold there in the summer but it can't be this cold, right?"

"Moms," her dad sighs, in mock commiseration. "She didn't want you to freeze between the door and the truck and the truck and the door. So weird."

He laughs at her arched eyebrow and pout. "Ship your coat back, Britt. You'll be sending us a whole box of team swag anyway. Just stick that monster in there with the hats and sweatshirts. Oh, and I think your sister wants a license plate frame." He frowns. "Or was it one of those big Hulk fist beer holders? Can't remember."

"I'm pretty sure they don't make Specters Hulk fist beer holders, Dad. Kind of a men's sports thing."

"True." He grins at her, and it hits her all at once that she's leaving, not just for college upstate, but actually going somewhere where she can't go home on the weekends if she wants to do laundry for free or get her fill of family time, and it makes her feel both very grown-up and very young at the same time. "She'd look pretty awesome in one of those things, wouldn't she?"

"Definitely," she agrees. Ashley is a thousand percent more elegant than she is and never did get the Pierce baseball skills, but she could rock a Hulk fist, no problem. They fall silent for a long moment, the only sound the chugging of the engine reverberating through the cab. Finally, she sighs and cracks the door. "I better go before they do cancel my flight."

"Okay," he says quietly, looking at her like she's both five and twenty-two and he isn't sure if he should take her home for a cookie and a nap or let her leave.

(She isn't sure either.)

"Okay," she repeats, and gets out of the truck before he takes her home, taking her duffle bag and her big rolling suitcase from the backseat.

The pavement is wet with snow and the air is freezing, even through the mom-approved layers of jacket, so Brittany hurries for the door. Her dad calls her back as the automatic doors slide open. "We're proud of you, kiddo. Crazy proud. Have fun."

He loves making up movie moments like this, and she loves him for it, so she arcs her rainbow mitten over her head, waving goodbye enthusiastically. He deserves an awesome goodbye wave; for all his own magical Pierce baseball skills, he never got the major league spring training invite, and she knows that he means those cheeseball movie words of his.

As soon as she gets to the gate, Brittany drops her bag on a chair and starts stripping off her winter gear. The airport isn't quite at t-shirt weather but it's too warm for all of this. Her coat, mittens, and scarf pile on the floor while she takes her OSU team hoodie from her bag and pulls it over her still-beanied head. When she pushes the hood back, the beanie goes with it, so Brittany tugs it from her head and shoves it in the back pocket of her jeans.

She hums the Jeopardy theme song to herself as she contemplates first the pile of clothing and then the not-so-empty space vacated by her hoodie. It's all got to fit in there, but she's not sure how. She starts with the coat, since it's the bulkiest. Mittens can go anywhere.

A few minutes later, all of the extra layers are folded, rolled, and squished into her carry-on, and four magazines, a book, two granola bars, and her iPad sit in a stack on the chair next to her bag, casualties of the over-stuffed coat. No big deal; she was going need all of this for her flight anyway.

After she's seated, and the plane is high above the clouds, Brittany turns on her iPad, a gift from the team. It had arrived the first week of December, loaded with nutrition and training guides, the team's manifesto, and a calendar set with workout plans so she'd be ready by the spring training mandatory reporting date. She skips past the Day 30 leg workout sent by the training staff—college playing shape and professional playing shape are two very different things; she's never been so sore in her life—and clicks on the WBL news app.

Santana Lopez dominates the home page.

The stock photo taken at the beginning of the 2011 season is front and center over three links: a new article, a link to her stats and highlights, and a link titled 'Full Coverage of Recovery.' Lopez's smile beams out like a cheery DMV picture, her hair hidden under a Specters cap. Her smile is insincere; it's not a high-quality image, but Brittany can see the strain around the edges of her lips, the tightness in her dark eyes. Brittany has seen video of Lopez playing second base for years now, and when she smiles (rarely, like maybe for half a second after the team won the division in 2010), she never ever smiles like that, all toothy and eager and fake fake fake. The smiles she allows are small, smug, satisfied with a job well done. (And in all of the images after the 2011 season, there isn't a smile at all.)

"She's hot."

Brittany looks up at her seatmate. "What?"

The guy, middle-aged, paunchy, balding, creepy, points at her screen. "That's Santana Lopez, right? She's hot. You a Specters fan?"

"Something like that."

"The WBL is cool. It's no MLB but they're not bad for girls. Too bad about what happened to her, huh?" He leans in closer, smothering her nostrils with bad cologne, and whispers, "I heard she was drunk as a skunk and the league covered it up. Have you seen the pictures? Only really wasted people can wreck cars that badly and live."

"Skunks don't drink alcohol, they prefer shrooms," Brittany monotones, hoping he'll get the hint. Playing quirky-dumb usually gets this kind of weirdo to back off. Who talks to strangers on airplanes, anyway?

Creepy pretends not to hear her—the wrinkle in his forehead gives him away—and shakes his head. "Still, boozehound or not, she is smoking hot. I'd love to see her out of that uniform."

Gross. Brittany leans forward and tugs her earphones from her bag, putting each one in deliberately, and turns towards the window. When she's sure that Creepy isn't lurking over her shoulder, she clicks the link ("Lopez recovered?") under Lopez's picture.

**_Lopez to miss beginning of season, Specters GM says._**

_2010 All-Star Santana Lopez is likely to miss the first month of the season, San Francisco Specters General Manager Will Schuester says, as the Specters' second-baseman recovers from the horrific injuries sustained in an auto accident in October 2011._

_"Of course we'd like to have her back on Opening Day. We are working closely with her doctors and trainers to get her in playing shape for the season," Schuester said. "However, her long-term health is the most important thing for our organization, and we will take her rehab one step at a time. If she can't come back until May or June, so be it."_

_Lopez, 27, was driving across the Bay Bridge to her home in San Francisco when her car was struck by a drunk driver, causing severe injuries to her left shoulder and elbow. These injuries required numerous surgeries to repair ligament and joint damage. The other driver was paralyzed in the crash and pled guilty to felony drunk driving charges._

_Many have speculated that Lopez may miss a second full season, and both Specters management and fans are certainly worried that the days of spectacular throws and acrobatic defense at second base are over._

_"A single joint reconstruction can take months to return to normal for an average person," said a sports medicine specialist interviewed for this article. "Add in a second reconstruction on the same arm, the dominant arm, and you've at minimum doubled the recovery time." The Specters will have to wait and see if Lopez can return to her pre-accident form. "There are no guarantees beyond typical use, which of course does not include throwing or batting."_

_The Specters begin Spring Training in Scottsdale, Arizona, today. Although she has not been medically cleared for baseball activities, Lopez is expected to attend._

* * *

The town car pauses for a moment at a rolling gate, where the driver rolls down the window and gives the guard his ID and her name. Both items are crossed-checked on a list, then the guard nods, hands back the driver's ID and waves them over the track. They drive alongside a large three story tan-and-white building with few windows, coming to a stop around the corner from the gate in front of a heavy steel security door. If it weren't for the large Specters logo painted on the door, Brittany would have thought this was some high-security office building, not the cornerstone of the team's spring training facilities.

The walls of the building dip abruptly about three hundred yards to her left, slipping underneath rising bleachers. Brittany feels a tiny thrill go through her at the thought of getting out on the field. Long flights, nerves, and ball fields always make her want to play. It's like that guy with the drooling dogs, only instead of a bell, it's bleachers rattling and hearing the national anthem. Baseball field, play—reflex. And maybe, if she can get her cleats in the dirt and her glove on a ball, this might feel real.

Right now, being in Arizona seems like a dream, starting from the moment she was called away from the Enterprise counter by a guy in a suit and a Specters tie before she could finalize the contract on her rental car, and directed to the town car. She tried not to be surprised when the car didn't have a team logo on it; it seems like every person and every little thing related to the team is covered in that ghosty orange-and-gray SF in one way or another.

It's only a matter of time until she's covered in it, too.

Just like in San Francisco, the Specters' stadium is on the outskirts of town, a few miles from the Giants' downtown spring training home. On the way from the airport, Brittany had gawked at the people in shorts, T-shirts and various team caps, the jagged mountains along the horizon, the cacti she last saw in a Road Runner cartoon.

Yep. Arizona is some kind of beige dream land.

She startles when her door opens, letting in a blast of intense, dry heat and a short-haired blonde woman in a Specters jersey. She instantly starts sweating. Holy hell, it's hot. Hot like the house gets when her mom puts the oven on self-clean and it goes to five hundred degrees and vaporizes all the stuck-on stuff at the bottom. It's only February. She can't imagine how people actually live here in the summer, if it's like this now.

(The morning's snow seems like a hundred years ago.)

"Hi," the woman says as she leans in, one hand on the door, the other hand jutting out for her to take. How the hell can she stand to touch the door? "I'm Quinn Fabray."

"I'm really glad I took off my mittens," Brittany muses, and the words come out louder than she intended because Quinn smirks, biting back a laugh.

"You're Pierce, right? The shortstop? Beiste asked me to meet you, give you the tour before practice starts."

Brittany hums in assent. "And you…" She narrows her eyes at Quinn, recalling last season's roster. "…first base?" Quinn nods. "Kinda short for a first baseman, aren't you?"

Quinn laughs, a short, high disbelieving laugh. "Yeah, I guess. I used to play second before I got traded here." She shoots a pointed look at Brittany's long legs and says, "Besides, you're kinda tall for a shortstop, aren't you?"

"That...is one hundred percent true," Brittany concedes. "Sorry."

The heat is melting her verbal filter. It's the only explanation.

"No problem, rookie." Quinn gets a troublesome gleam in her eye. "Or is there something else you like to be called? Maybe Phenom? Legend-in-the-making?"

Of course her reputation and all the crazy media talk has preceded her. She hopes it won't cause problems with her new teammates, all of whom have worked their asses off to get to this level, and not all of whom are guaranteed a spot in the big leagues. There is a delicate line she's going to have to walk: she can't pretend that she isn't as good as she is, but she can't act like she is as good as the talking heads say she is. She has a feeling, though, that if she turns it into a joke, people will let it go. "I like future-Hall-of-Famer myself," she says, "but you can call me Brittany."

Quinn rolls her eyes, but a smile comes with the gesture. "We can work with that. Let's get inside. It's crazy-hot out here."

"That's what I've been saying," Brittany mumbles as she shoulders her bag and follows Quinn through the door.

* * *

"Fifteen degrees?" Quinn rounds on her, gaping at the idea. "God, you must be roasting. I came up from winter ball in the Dominican yesterday, and it was seventy-five when I left. This feels great."

"It was snowing," Brittany says, pulling her beanie from her back pocket and waving it at Quinn, who chuckles. "I didn't think I was going to make my flight, but the snow stopped just before they puddle-jumped us to Chicago, and it seemed okay there."

They turn a corner, heading down a long hallway with multiple doors, interspersed with framed photographs of past teams. "It's kind of a labyrinth down here," Quinn explains. "I'll show you the other way in, since this hallway is where most of the coaches' offices are, and you'll get snagged by someone first thing in the morning if you're not careful. That's Schuester's office, and he's a nice guy and all, but when you haven't had your coffee yet—"

"Fuck!"

Brittany jumps, twisting her head sharply towards the sound, muffled by the closed door they've just passed. "What—"

"The trainer's room," Quinn says, continuing down the hall like nothing's happened. "The door's typically open, but they're working on Lopez right now and she won't let anyone see her when she's rehabbing."

"_Santana_ Lopez?" Brittany looks back at the door. "Like, Santana-Lopez-busted-arm Santana Lopez?"

Quinn chuckles. "Yeah, how many Lopezes are there?"

Brittany thinks about it for a second. "In the league? Seventeen." Quinn gives her that odd look, that _um, okay_ look she started getting when she was a kid, and tapered off as she grew up. But apparently rattling off random facts as a rookie is received about the same as it was when she was in third grade; her athletic ability gave her wiggle room with her peers then, she hopes it does now. "I saw that article about her this morning. So is it true, that she isn't—"

"She isn't ready?" A hard look comes over Quinn's face. "She's not. But you better pray she's ready to play by the time we break camp."

Brittany's brow furrows in confusion. "I don't understand."

"Santana is…" Quinn stops, tosses her head, laughs cynically. "You'll see, Pierce. Come on, let's get your gear to the locker room and get you set up. Afternoon practice starts in half an hour."

With one final glance at the door, Brittany follows Quinn down the hall.


	3. Chapter 3

_Chapter Two: Don't be afraid (be very afraid)_

* * *

"Goddamn shitting motherfucking _fuck!_" Santana caps her outburst with a sharp glare at the offender—her reconstructed shoulder and elbow. "I fucking hate your fucking painful guts, you asshole!"

"Are you finished?"

Slowly, pointedly, Santana turns her head, fixing her glare on the shaggy-haired blonde man standing beside her. "No," she says. "And if you interrupt me again, Evans, I don't care how much you're helping me, I'm telling everyone about your illegal lip injections. Steroids kill, Trouty."

Sam doesn't bother to respond; too well-trained or too bored or just plain used to her ranting to pay attention. Instead, he steps forward, moving in front of her, standing between her legs. "I'm just asking, because we need to get you stretching out, and if you're not done bitching, I can go get some ear plugs until you're finished." He grins at her, and she has to restrain herself from rolling her eyes in the face of that dopey Southern boy smile. "These Christian ears of mine are very sensitive."

Now she does roll her eyes. "Oh, bullshit, Sammy. I heard what you said when you caught that foul ball with your junk last season." Her eyes widen, and she sticks out her right hand, tapping his chest with her open palm. "Wait, is this the first time you've been between a woman's legs since then? 'Cause if you're trying to see if it still works, you know I'm not into that."

"Morals clause, Santana," he chides, ignoring the glower darkening her features as he cups her left elbow with one hand and her left shoulder with the other, and begins to manipulate and loosen the tight joints.

"Yeah. No asking, and definitely no telling." She winces as Sam rotates her upper arm forward and up, extending her surgically-repaired rotator cuff to its current limit. "How long, do you think?"

"Until you can come out?" He shrugs. "Ten years after you retire."

Santana kicks at him. "No, idiot. Until I can _play_."

Sam steps back to meet her eyes. "Honestly?" Santana nods. "Santana, we're working with two badly dislocated joints here. If it were just the fractures, or just the ligament tears, I'd have an answer for you. But these two, with the amount of damage you sustained…" He pats her shoulder and elbow. "I'm not asking, and they aren't telling."

This time, he can't ignore how her jaw sets, or her eyes narrow. "I'm sorry, Santana. You're lucky you're—"

"Alive?" She scoffs. "Yeah, I'm overjoyed." After the accident, everyone—doctors, nurses, her family, both Schuester and Beiste, that douchebag Abrams from WSPN—kept saying it, over and over again, as if the more times they said it, the more likely she was to believe it. Instead, the phrase and the message behind it has stopped meaning anything at all.

"I was going to say you're lucky that you're going to play again. It might not be as soon as you like, but your career isn't over. As long as you keep up with your rehab exercises and take it slow…"

"Right." All the light has left her eyes; she has no more patience for Sam's platitudes and reassurances. "Ice me up, Sam. I've had enough for today."

He wraps her in ice and leaves her for fifteen minutes to count ceiling tiles she has counted a dozen times before. Santana lets out a breath through pursed lips and scoffs.

Lucky. Maybe on a good day, being pulled from that car with only a mangled arm, a concussion and severe bruising _was_ lucky. She isn't dead, she has all four limbs, Sam and Beiste and Schuester think she still has a shot at playing ball, and she's not permanently disabled, unlike the bastard who hit her.

But on the bad days, Santana thinks that how she wound up isn't any kind of luck at all. Bad days, when there were strangers bathing her and cutting her food and teaching her how to write chicken scratch that vaguely resembled her name right-handed. Bad days, after all of the nurses left, when she didn't bother changing her clothes for three days, because pulling shirts and sports bras over her head one-handed was too hard. Bad days, like laying on a table under fluorescent lights, arm wrapped in ice, while her teammates are outside in the fresh air and sunshine, running laps and running their mouths, catching balls and catching up after the break, loose and laughing, _healthy_.

On days like today, she hates that there is still no answer to _when_, only hard work in preparation for a day no one can guarantee will come. On days like today, both retiring and pushing forward spark that anxious pounding in her chest and she can't tell which is more terrifying: finding something else to do with her life after all of these years or getting out on the field again with these two patchwork joints. On days like today, when the scars scored over her skin aren't proof of her health but reminders of grotesque angles and more pain than she thought possible, she thinks that luck would have been to lose the arm, to know she was done playing, to have not made it out of that wreck at all, _anything_ other than this limbo.

She pushes the thoughts out of her mind when Sam returns. "Everyone is on the field," he says. "Locker room is clear if you want to go change."

"Thanks." She hoists herself into a sitting position with hip and abdominal power alone—at least her core strength is more or less the same, even if she can barely write her own name—and allows Sam to unwrap her. When he's done, she scoots off the table and heads for the door.

"Santana." She turns around, raising an eyebrow in question. "If you're feeling up to it, I can release you to catch. Beiste needs an extra glove to shag balls during BP."

"Seriously?"

Sam nods. "Yeah. But catch _only_. No throwing, no diving, no chasing after anything. Elbow brace on at all times." He jabs the rolled bandages at her in warning. "And don't even think about going around me—I already told all of the coaches what you're allowed to do. We're not pulling a Mariano Rivera and busting you up worse, got it?"

Damn Trouty. It's hard to have a full-on bad day when he reaches out and finds a way to get her on the field. Given the choice, batting practice would be more fun with a bat in her hand, whacking easy pitches into the high Arizona sky, but if the choice is standing in the outfield with a glove catching lazy fly balls or staying inside and doing the same set of rehab exercises she's been working on for months, she'll play outfielder for the afternoon. She nods. "Got it."

* * *

Santana pokes her head into the locker room before she goes in, listening for signs of activity. Sam said it was clear, but people are in and out of here all the time, trading out gloves or getting more sunscreen or hunting down a spare set of laces for their cleats. None of her teammates have seen her arm outside of her sling and various braces since the accident, and none of them will if she can help it. She has done her best to keep eyes away from her scars: she only changes in here if she's alone and will take clothing to the showers if she isn't, and she selected a locker on the opposite end of the room from the pitchers, who—bullpen and starters together—move as one large, noisy, attention-drawing herd. Just as they do on the field, the rest of the team spirals out around the pitchers, generally keeping in groups by position during spring training. The organization breaks down a bit in San Francisco, where the locker room is larger and more of a high class lounge room, but outfielders stay with outfielders, pitchers near pitchers, and so on.

Santana, by virtue of her injury and her temper, stays on the periphery, both in Scottsdale and in San Francisco. So she is quite surprised when she rounds the corner to her locker (more of an oversized, open-doored closet than the clanging metal of her youth) and sees that the locker next to hers has stuff in it.

A black duffel bag, a rolling suitcase, and—_holy crap—_rainbow mittens accompany a brand new set of dark gray spring training uniforms on hangers. There are two different spring training unis: gray practice t-shirts with orange sleeves and ridiculous orange shorts, and the gray button-down jerseys and cream-colored pants reserved for games. One hanger is empty. She checks again for signs of life in the room—doesn't matter why you're doing it, looking into your teammate's locker is a creeper move and shouldn't be observed by others—and tugs a fistful of game uniform towards her so she can see who's set up shop next door.

_Pierce_.

She knows all about number 13. Over the break, if the writers and analysts weren't talking about her accident, they were gushing over Brittany Pierce: her defensive skills, her offensive skills, her speed, her magical ability to go from college ball straight into the majors. Brittany Pierce is supposed to be the second coming of Ozzie Smith, or Omar Vizquel, with better offensive production. A five-tool player in a position that doesn't produce five-tool players. Brittany Pierce is supposed to be the missing piece to the Specters' lineup, as if one player alone can make all the cogs fall into place and run the machine to a championship.

Writers and analysts don't know shit. Ninety percent of them have never seen Pierce play in person. If they had, if they'd gone beyond the highlight reels and sat in the stands on a warm spring day and watched her—really watched her—they'd know she wasn't the second coming of any of the great shortstops.

Brittany Pierce is the first coming of Brittany Pierce.

Last April, arm still in a sling and doped up on painkillers, Santana had met Beiste and Schuester in Schuester's office.

"I need you to do me a favor." Schuester slid a file across the desk to her. "We're thinking of drafting Brittany Pierce, but we want you to go see her first."

"We're not asking you to do any real scouting, Santana," Beiste clarified. "We just want you to get a feel for her."

Santana bit back the _wanky_ on her tongue. "Why me?"

"We don't intend for her to go to the minors. She's a very good ballplayer, she is absolutely capable of playing at this level, but she is young, and we need to know if you can work with her. We need _you_ to make this pick work. On the field when you're ready, of course, but off the field too."

Santana hated rah-rah speeches on principle, especially ones that implied that she was difficult and a shitty teammate (true), but capable and worthy of mentoring a baby player in spite of it (what?), but fuck it, she didn't have anything better to do but sit around watching bad daytime television until it was time for her next pill. And maybe it was lame of her to fall for Schuester's conviction that she'd play again (and soon), but she did, and before she knew what she was doing, she'd opened the file and started reading.

The file was full of stats: average, OPS, OBS, fielding percentage, strikeouts, walks, slugging, stolen bases, all the usual numbers that simplified a human being into a series of equations. A couple of pictures of Pierce in action, a flash drive labeled 'Pierce highlights 2011' and a plane ticket.

The next afternoon, she was easing herself into a seat along the third base line, just behind the Buckeyes' dugout. In the morning, afraid she would get spotted so far away from home and hounded for autographs or harassed with stupid questions about the accident and why she was in Ohio, Santana had left her hair loose and put a Buckeyes cap over her head. She tugged the brim low, hiding her eyes

Losing the ponytail and changing her cap made her anonymous, despite the sling-confined arm and years of national coverage. Funny how people only knew what she looked like in uniform or in Specters colors; out of it, fans barely recognized her. For the first time since the accident, she felt like herself, not _Santana Lopez, San Francisco Specters_, who was probably done as a player and who (rumor had it) was drunk out of her mind that night on the bridge.

(It didn't matter that it was the other driver who was fucked up and who had probably destroyed her career, or that he had pled guilty to the criminal charges. It was her fault, had to be, because she played aggressively and questioned the eyesight of umpires more frequently than any of her contemporaries and didn't have the patience for the same moronic questions from the beat reporters night after night. Last time she checked, being a bitch didn't total her car or blow up her arm.)

The team took the field to a rousing cheer from the crowd. Santana took one look around and, for the sake of keeping her anonymity, clapped along unenthusiastically. Even clapping was hard, right hand to thigh, again and again. She couldn't wait for sentencing next month; after the judge heard that she couldn't even clap correctly, the son of a bitch would go away for years.

It didn't take long for Santana to see why Beiste and Schuester wanted Pierce so badly, badly enough to see if Santana was willing to play with her. (As if she had any idea how to figure that out. Chemistry was something you worked out on the field by playing together, not something you could assess from the stands.) In the top of the first inning, Pierce fielded a difficult bounce barehanded, tapped second and winged the ball to first in plenty of time to catch the runner, pumping her fist in celebration. Bottom of the second, Pierce pounded a double down the right field line, and two pitches later she stole third standing up, mugging at her teammates in the dugout.

There was something in the way Pierce followed the ball, on defense and offense, with a grace, an attentiveness, a restlessness—as if, if she wasn't dead-focused on the ball all the time, she would be lost—that Santana was intimately familiar with. Pierce played with all the intensity Santana did, only she was loose, goofy, joyful.

Santana eased her phone from her pocket and clumsily accessed her contact list. Her weak right thumb almost sent Beiste "Sink here" but she backed up the autocorrect and sent "Sign her," just as Pierce crossed the plate, looked into the stands, and met her eyes.

Goddamn.

The Specters keep the locker room cool in Arizona, but it's remembering Pierce's smile all those months ago that sends gooseflesh over Santana's skin just as it had then. Santana lets go of the jersey and swivels back to her locker, eager to shake that smile, her own fascination, that moment where Pierce looked up at a stranger but saw _her._

Santana slips her hinged elbow brace on, fitting the stabilizing disc over the joint, and tugs the straps a little too tight, to remind herself of where she is and _who_ she is and that any kind of fascination she feels, or thought she felt for a second when she was still full of Vicodin, doesn't get to happen.

No way.

* * *

Nothing beats a ballpark. The sun shining, the warm air, the light breeze wafting the smell of fresh-cut grass and wet dirt through the sharp scent of sunscreen, the crack of solid wood launching balls, the snap of balls popping into leather gloves. All the senses of her youth, of hours spent outside with her family and her friends and her coaches, of the highest points of her life—when a well-timed hit left her buried nose-deep in the grass under a pile of ecstatic teammates, when she twisted way out of position and snagged a ball to end a game to sweep a series, when she completed her first unassisted double play, when she hit her first homer—all of these things, these moments, her life, are here.

Brittany hadn't realized how nervous she was until she puts on her practice uniform—shorts and a t-shirt, both emblazoned with Specters symbols—for the first time and steps out of the dugout. As soon as her cleats hit the grass, she relaxes, lets go of the little voice in her head taunting her, saying _you can't do this, you're not good enough, you're not ready_. How can she _not_ be ready? This is her home.

Even if her home is all of a sudden not the cozy three-bed-two-bath house she grew up in, but the biggest mansion she's ever seen.

The field isn't that much bigger than a college field, or even the minor league field she played at the summer before her senior year. But everything else is: the stands, the scoreboard, the walls covered in ten-foot-tall ads, all towering over the field. The loudspeakers blaring classic rock. The sheer number of people here for practice: the coaching staff, the trainers, the players both signed and trying out, the smattering of press allowed, the team's scouts in the stands, the owner, general manager and family.

She's never seen so many kids running around an official practice.

It's also about ten degrees cooler than the parking lot, which is awesome, because she doesn't want to sweat all over her new gear until she's actually done some work.

"Pierce!"

Brittany turns towards the sound of her name coming from the edge of the outfield grass. Quinn is standing with Mike Chang, the team's infield coach, who lifts his head from a bucket of baseballs when Quinn calls her name. She and Mike have been communicating all winter. He's responsible for half of those brutal workouts and a whole series of agility exercises she hadn't seen before, and she's been looking forward to working with him. Brittany trots over to them, tucking her glove into her armpit and extending her hand for Mike to shake. "Hey, it's great to finally meet you."

"Likewise," he says, taking her hand. His palms are callused but his grip is soft; the kind of hands that have been in this sport so long that he shakes hands the same way he would field a ground ball—nice and smooth and easy. Brittany can tell just from that handshake that he has plenty to teach her. "You stretched out?" When she nods, he smiles. "Great, take your position and let's get you fielding, see what you got."

Mike starts her off easy. From the back of the pitcher's mound, he throws bouncing balls up the middle for her to glove, switching to harder bounces, higher hops as they go. He watches with trained eyes as she moves back and forth, positioning herself in front for one ball, moving to a backhand for the next, studying the way Brittany handles tricky hops and balls thrown nearly over her head. When he's emptied the bucket—and when she's filled the bucket behind her—he calls her over. "Nice hands," he says. "Let's start on some double-plays, covering second. I'll be hitting this time, so expect a little more speed. I want to see how you move. Fabray—stand in for Lopez."

As Brittany moves into short, Quinn takes the field at second—halfway between first base and second base on the edge of the outfield grass, leaving the actual base open to run the drill. Brittany adjusts her glove and waits for the first ball.

"Well, well, well, look who's here."

Quinn's sarcastic amusement pulls Brittany's attention away from Mike and towards the dugout stairs, where a dark-haired figure strolls onto the field and heads straight for Beiste, who's supervising some running drills in left field.

There are two things she notices about Santana Lopez, the first time she sees her in person.

The first: Santana doesn't reach out to anyone. No hugs, no touches on the arm, not so much as a smile, the exact opposite of every other player who has come on the field. She nods when coaches and reporters come over or call out to her, but she's intent on her conversation with Beiste, game-face on. Not that very many people are coming up to her or welcoming her back; Brittany's pretty sure half of her teammates are ignoring her and the other half haven't noticed she's on the field.

The second: Santana Lopez has a robot arm. Brittany couldn't see it until Santana heads for right field, but the sun catches her elbow and sparkles. With the tan leather glove on her right hand and the black composite lines framing her left arm, she looks like a seal with a prosthetic fin. So cool.

"Santana!"

Santana stops in place, seems to consider whether or not she's coming over for a long moment, and finally shakes her head, reverses direction and comes in, stopping on the edge of the outfield. "Hi, Chang," she says. "Quinn."

"Lopez." She and Quinn share some kind of formal nod-plus-staring thing Brittany doesn't really understand—it's awkward, like they both know that maybe they could be friends if they were less similar, but they just aren't.

Mike puts a hand on her shoulder and turns her towards Santana. "Santana, have you met Brittany Pierce yet? She's our new shortstop."

Santana arcs her eyes over Brittany, looking her over the same way she would look at a stop sign or a rock, all cool and uninterested and not a little bit friendly. "Yeah, she's all over WSPN. Me, too." She tilts her head, silently challenging anyone to comment on why exactly she'd been on TV so much, until a sharp whistle from right field pulls her attention away. "Nice to meet you, rookie. I have to go."

(The third thing she notices is that Santana moves so, so fast when she's running away that she probably doesn't even know what she's running away from.)


End file.
